


steel yourself

by keithsforeheadtattoo



Category: Choices: Across the Void (Visual Novel), The Elementalists (Visual Novel)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-12-26 05:46:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18277001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keithsforeheadtattoo/pseuds/keithsforeheadtattoo
Summary: "They've a kettle in the employee-access kitchen for traditional boiling that I find much more direct than synthesizing. I can put it on for you, if you like." Sol offers helpfully, but neutrally, without a smile.Harrington changes color again, pink blooming across him and threatening to redden."Iaman employee of the Atlas." His eyes narrow; “…and of course I know how to boil water.""Ah! Congratulations!" Sol says, being genuine, about the first news.Harrington screws up his face like it’s on a drawstring.an AU set more than a year prior to the events of ATV (in which Beckett's metal powers are for space alien reasons, lmao)





	steel yourself

"...and the bars and restaurants here aboard the Atlas surely rival that of any neighboring space station."

The same Vanguard midshipman who's been dramatically furrowing and slackening his brow for the entirety of the tour spits out a nonverbal scoff that's finally too loud to ignore.

"Are there any questions?" Sol, as always, attempts diplomacy first.

The midshipman smirks in what looks like mid-grade offense.

"Are there seriously members of staff aboard with both the knowledge and credentials required to cultivate live gyryxm fungi?"

"Absolutely not," Sol nods, once, unflustered.

"Then the restaurants here aboard the Atlas aren't even in league with a third of the stations one could reasonably consider 'neighboring'. And that's only a third if I'm being magnanimous."

The Vanguard cadet folds his arms.

Sol smiles broadly. 

"I appreciate your concern," he uses a well-polished customer service voice.

Under normal circumstances he'd spend a few more seconds on it, but curtly turning the whole tour group down a different corridor ripples a wave of laughter through the other Vanguard soldiers at the cadet's expense. The young man blushes instantly, fervidly.

"Go grow your own mushrooms, Harrington!” another midshipman calls out, and Harrington's face nearly goes purple. Sol can't read whether it's rage or shame. And knows certainly the two aren't mutually exclusive.

= = = = = = =

"Oh." Sol edges out of a puddle of what smells like green tea, surprised not by the spill but its creator.

"Before you even begin," the midshipman from last week's tour speaks, unmistakably, in the same reedy voice, "this was no fault of my own, because the--"

Harrington completely freezes up as their eyes meet. "...oh." he says, too.

"They've a kettle in the employee-access kitchen for traditional boiling that I find much more direct than synthesizing. I can put it on for you, if you like." Sol offers helpfully, but neutrally, without a smile.

Harrington changes color again, pink blooming across him and threatening to redden. 

"I _am_ an employee of the Atlas." His eyes narrow; “…and of course I know how to boil water."

"Ah! Congratulations!" Sol says, being genuine, about the first news.

Harrington screws up his face like it’s on a drawstring.

“I’m the Navigator of the ship,” he huffs out.

“Mm, we _have_ been in dire need…” Sol stoops all the way to a single knee, removes an ornately-decorated handkerchief from his coat. 

Harrington carefully watches Sol’s towering frame bend low before demanding, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Sol truly thinks about it for a moment.

“Only that I am delighted to have you aboard. I hope we will see more of each other.” He closes with a placid smile.

Harrington looks like he’s been popped with a pin. 

He flounders silently at length, stammering a little, before presumptuously reaching out a palm for the handkerchief. He has the flippancy of someone used to getting physically handed things without asking. 

“Allow me,” Sol’s smile only grows as he daubs the cloth across the spill himself. 

Harrington just stands there, examining Sol’s behavior like a zoo exhibit.

“…you’re the First Officer of the ship,” he says, finally, incredulously.

“Indeed.” Sol confirms with no awareness of Harrington’s meaning. 

“Then… then surely there are subordinates, for things like janitorial work?” Harrington says, instead of ‘thank you’.

= = = = = = =

Titania swings the Atlas in an intensely veering arc between a cluster of tightly-spaced moons. She curses a long string in Apri so colorfully that there are words even Sol hasn’t heard before.

“This,” she pants, still flipping through control screens in a mania, “is NOT the route you promised me, Beckman!”

From his seat at the Navigator’s post, Harrington visibly bristles. 

“Beckett,” he enunciates over the squeal of several of the ship’s alarms, “It’s Beckett Harrington.”

“IT’S NOT THE TIME TO TALK TO ME, IS WHAT IT IS!” Titania shakes her head furiously but doesn’t tear her eyes from the viewport.

Sol glances only once at the drunkenly swaying form slumped in the Captain’s chair. They’ve been through eight hires in the past three months and their current commander is a Thol ex-sailor who must be literally hundreds of years old and has spent most of it hung over. Artemis’s staffing decisions have always prioritized speed over longevity. 

“The map manifest clearly showed—“ Beckett attempts to defy Titania’s wishes and is swiftly shown why not to.

“MOONS DON’T APPEAR OVERNIGHT! YOU READ IT WRONG, YOU CHILD!”

It takes about fifteen minutes of tense silence, interrupted only by the Captain’s belching, for the Atlas to safely clear the whole star system. Sol spends most of it unobtrusively on his own data screen, but finds himself glancing a few times through its pellucid edges for snatches of Harrington’s face. Beckett Harrington, Sol rolls over in his mind as though he hadn’t memorized it instantly as soon as heard it. Sol has always had a talent for names, for memory, for successfully compartmentalizing his professional feelings from his personal ones, for getting his soft heart broken by confident and interesting men. Certainly not in that order.

= = = = = = =

“Is this seat yet taken?” Sol begins all things with courtesy. He gestures one long arm in a sweep toward the mess hall’s benches, yards beneath his giant frame. 

Beckett Harrington heaves out a sigh so laborious it deserves a paycheck and cranes his head upwards just as slowly, with just as much haughty effort. 

“Don’t pity me.” 

Sol’s eyebrows leap in shock. “I assure you I do not.”

They spend a moment unmistakably inspecting each other: Beckett with a bowl of dark, cooked grains and a steaming thermos, Sol with a flute glass of citrus water and a carefully dressed plate of something floral. 

A realization seems to come together behind Beckett’s eyes as he looks from Sol, to their drunken Captain staggering out along the handrail, to a very lost-looking new recruit wandering the corridors, to another table in the mess hall full of many Atlas employees, laughing and talking and sharing food. His gaze comes back full circle and stays so long this time Sol starts to shift, unsure, like a windblown tree.

“If you sit here, you’re going to have to listen to me complain.” Beckett says. His tone is more than clear that this is not self-deprecation but an actual requisite.

Sol bends his huge, lanky body to fit across the table from Beckett, his knees jutting up like he’s sitting on doll furniture.

“My first few weeks aboard the ship were rather trying as well.” He says in a purposeful attempt to give the false impression it has gotten much easier since.

Harrington unscrews the lid of his vacuum flask, peering moodily into the fragrant black liquid. 

“I’ve been employed here for all of twenty-three days, and I’ve already charted the wrong course, bent an entire shipment of kitchen utensils in half, torn an arm off of the kinetic generator, melted the heart reader they stuck on me in the med bay, and injured one of the Butler robots. …Not critically, of course.” 

He takes half a sip, spilling it back down his chin and into the thermos in his attempt to clarify, “And not on purpose!”

“Of course,” says Sol, who owns more uniquely stitched handkerchiefs than there are days in the month and is delighted to have someone to need them.

“How, uh…” Sol knits his eyebrows together, “How did all of that occur?”

He fishes the folded cloth from his pocket and moves gingerly to surrender it. Beckett reaches out right away, his hands miniature next to Sol’s broad, lengthy ones. Underneath the fabric of the handkerchief, Sol feels Beckett’s fingertips make contact with his palm; they’re warm, nearly hot, and there’s something about his firm and sweaty grip that’s almost mineral. Leaden and fusible all at once. 

The corners of Sol’s mouth creep upwards even as he tries to stop himself.

The cap of Beckett’s metal thermos shoots wildly into the air and off the table like a hockey puck. 

Beckett sighs and lets his eyes fall closed. 

“I’ve been under stress as of late.” he explains the lid, and the litany of damage to the Atlas. “These… misfortunes… always happen when I’m… out of sorts.”

Sol twirls his fork tines against the lip of his plate, choosing his words meticulously. “Apologies in advance if I’m incorrect — or, regardless of its accuracy, if I’m being impertinent to assume…”

Harrington stares at him, wry and flat and expectant.

Sol lowers his voice. “Are you a Stanyk?”

Beckett sets down his silverware and leans all the way back in his seat.

“It’s what got me dismissed from the Vanguard.” he says in a tone Sol absolutely can’t read, it sounds final and hard but he can’t tell if it’s with resentment or pride.

“You’ll find Artemis to be a truly equal-opportunity employer.” Sol says, both as consolation and with real fondness. 

Beckett guiltily works his tongue against the inside of his cheek. “It’s not in and of itself what got me dismissed. There were… pre-existing… interpersonal issues in the workplace.”

Sol thinks immediately of the entire corridor packed with Vanguard soldiers who all roared eagerly with laughter to watch Harrington get effectively shut up. The mob-like type of laughter that’s not mirthful but aggressively demonstrative.

Beckett finally shrugs. “My superiors already didn’t like me, and then, the day after I toured the Atlas, I was being trained on a new set of controls inside a Marshall fighter and… managed to weld them all into a mass.”

Sol stabs his fork incisively through a yellow petal and withholds his thoughts. There’s an awfully wide chasm between being let go just for _being_ a Stanyk, versus being fired for endangering the crew’s lives with a side of constant insubordination.

Instead, he asks, “What had you anxious enough to do that?”

Harrington stares off to the side for a moment; Sol assumes he’s lost in thought until he sees the thermos cap floating through the air towards them, jerkily, like a wounded insect. It roosts directly in Beckett’s cupped palm.

“I never really wanted to serve under the Vanguard in the first place. My intentions have always been to expand my knowledge of the universe and simultaneously utilize my skills. Acquired and… predisposed.” Beckett turns the lid over in his hand, examining both. “I was taken with the Atlas from the very second I stepped aboard.”

Sol allows his face to change only slightly in surprise. 

“I had thought,” Beckett shrugs mildly, “that, despite the Vanguard’s jarring imperfections, joining their ranks would be my means to a desired end. I’d thought, in fact, it was the only reasonable option left for me.”

He drinks warily from the vacuum flask, its steam heaving away in small puffs from his breath.

“It made me inconsolably anxious,” Harrington concludes, almost reverent, “to learn that I was wrong.”

Sol beams, flickers of pastel color oscillating through the crystals near his eyes. “Well, I’m happy to know the Atlas made such an impression.”

“It ruined my plans,” Beckett clunks the lid onto the table. “I had set up a life for myself in the Vanguard and swiftly abandoned it under the daze of some naive fantasy that a place like the Atlas is… where I’m ‘supposed’ to be.”

Harrington shakes his own words from his neck and shoulders. “Instead, I’ve only transferred myself to a _different_ vessel aboard which I am a cataclysmically astral weight.”

For the first time Sol has ever had the pleasure of witnessing, Beckett Harrington smiles. It’s a sarcastic and simpering one, but the first. 

Sol’s giant heart beats fast beneath his shirt.

“I think you are a treasure,” he says.

Beckett swallows hard. His thermos lid whirls noisily against the table before hurtling suddenly up towards the ceiling and nailing Sol in the eye.

“…I’m so sorry,” both of them end up saying almost in unison.

**Author's Note:**

> thank u KimmyRose for this idea lmao she called Sol "Space Beckett" and i was like NO NO HE'S WAY TOO SELF-EFFACING AND SWEET AND EMPATHETIC but we both agreed that if beckett somehow made his way onto the atlas they would prob fight and date each other
> 
> this basically was my longform proof that they are Super Different personalities but it snowballed out of control so fast and became whatever this is hahaha


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